pull apart the strands
by Caelitea
Summary: He falls in love with a girl who wears a dress of deceit—a girl whose smile is coated with sweet betrayal before she leaves him to chase a missing criminal. —Touya/Touko, N/Touko


**Author's Notes: **What where did this come from. I can't seem to escape writing Pokemon fics…  
I'm still iffy with writing Touya though…I guess there's some leeway regarding his portrayal as there is with any of the characters, but…I can't really seem to channel what I feel his character is. :U So overall, this is kind of meh...Ah well, I'll keep trying I suppose. u_u

Also, coming up with titles has been the most difficult challenge as of late…:T

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_She weaves an intricate lie of one part betrayal, two parts deceit; she weaves with threads of red and blue, gold and silver—  
But is it really all a lie?  
_

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**pull apart the strands**

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_There is the smile of love,  
And there is a smile of deceit,  
And there is a smile of smiles  
In which these two smiles meet.  
_—William Blake

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He was sure that they were meant for each other the first moment he saw her—and it was more than a love-at-first-sight thing that tended to happen in Bianca's cheesy romance novels that he admittedly sneaked a peek at occasionally. No, it was something startling enough to stop him in his tracks and downright stare—because something about her was so damn _familiar_, like a word on the tip of his tongue, when he knew he had never seen her before in his life.

She caught him staring and he had flushed deep red, but she laughed and offered her hand and said, "Hi, I'm Hilda, who're you?"

And he took her hand and said, "Touya, Touya Black."

She told him he was adorable and he blushed again but he was prepared this time and told her that he wasn't anywhere near as cute as her and she laughed again; when she asked where he was headed and he said Nimbasa City, she said that she'd go with him because she was bored and he let her because he thought he was falling in love.

He was. He was just falling in love with the wrong person.

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He thought she was beautiful; when they decided to take a ride on the ferris wheel he watched the bright lights from the rest of the amusement part reflect off of her eyes and the laughter rouge her cheeks with exhilaration. When she leaned back in her seat and turned her full attention onto him he felt his heart skip a beat at her smile; somehow flirting with her wasn't so easy despite his experience with women.

"Tell me your dream," she said, and the randomness of the question startled him but he complied nonetheless.

"I want to become the Champion," he said, and she grinned and wished him good luck, encouraging him with a _you can do it!_ before looking out at the scenery again.

"Why'd you ask?" he questions, stealing her attention once more. She smiles and puts a hand on the glass, her eyes soft as if she is remembering something fondly.

"Someone else asked me what my dreams were once," she replied, "On this ferris wheel. And once more, before leaving me. I guess I asked on a whim."

Touya feels a sinking feeling in his stomach, but he decides to ignore it and to prevent it he does not question further.

Hilda smiles brightly before she asks about his team of pokemon and he is more than happy to indulge her, to turn that look in her eyes into a sign of softness for _him_—but he thinks he knows, he knows and ignores it and refuses to acknowledge it.

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They continue travelling together; the city is overwhelming but exciting. She watches him battle and smiles when he does well—he's never lost in her presence, and he thinks she might be lady luck (specifically _his_ lady luck), although she doesn't seem to have any pokemon or battle experience of her own. It's uncommon but not strange, so he assumes that is why she is so interested in his pokemon and his goal to become champion.

Over the course of their journey they bump into Bianca and Cheren who she makes fast friends with—at least, with Bianca, because Cheren regards her oddly at first and he doesn't stop looking at her even after they've shaken hands and she's introduced herself.

"Like what you see, Cheren?" Touya teases, although inside he's just a little bit concerned about becoming rivals with one of his best friends.

"It's not that," Cheren snaps, blushing lightly in spite of himself, "There's just…something familiar about her…"

Touya blinks, "Yeah, I thought so too when I first saw her. We look kinda alike, don't we?"

His bespectacled friend frowns. "Well, now that you mention it, you do, but that's not what I mean."

At this point Hilda slings her arms around the both of them, laughing cheerily as Cheren lets out a displeased grunt and Touya joins in her laughing. Bianca waves at them to hurry up and the conversation is forgotten, for now.

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Suddenly, she disappears. He wakes up in the Pokecenter rooms with a note at his bedside that reads, _I enjoyed our time together. See you soon!_

He crumples the note and throws it in the garbage, both angered and slightly heartbroken. He feels scorned and wonders if this is how women feel to produce the saying that is _hell hath no fury like a woman scorned_. He's not a woman but he still feels bitter and he still feels angry for giving up so much of himself for a girl who disappeared like ashes in wind.

He forgets the _see you soon_ part of her note; he does not stop to wonder what it means as he leaves the town behind with his love and memories of a girl with bell-like laugh and the most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen.

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He arrives at the Pokemon League a changed person—sort of. He feels like he's grown but in reality he's just a little bit colder, a little bit more cynical.

Regardless, the excitement courses through his body like the blood in his veins, he grips the strap of his bag a little tighter as he steps forward to face the first of the Elite Four.

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He stands outside the door to the champion's room, breathing in and out, in and out to calm his nerves. He'd made it through the Elite Four but they certainly lived up to their name; trainers had a right to be terrified of their skill—and their respective stages sometimes, as well—namely Shauntal and Caitlin.

He breathes in and out, in and out, before he finally steps forward and into the champion's room.

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The winding stairs do not prepare him for what he sees.

It was _her_. Her, _Hilda_, after disappearing for a half a year and here she was, standing on the Champion's platform with a smile that reeked of betrayal, dressed in a black cocktail dress of deceit, looking like a supermodel that rivaled Elesa.

Half a year's worth of resentment and anger bubbled forth from his lips as he cursed her. "You lied to me!" he yelled, thinking of nothing else he could say.

And she smiled one of her beautiful smiles, coated with sweet betrayal that didn't have a hint of remorse.

"You can take it that way if you want," she told him, "But you never asked, not once, about anything about myself."

He felt like a little boy now, shoved to his naïve self in front of the girl—_woman_—he once loved. It was _not_ his fault that he felt slighted.

"Is Hilda your real name?" He forced though clenched teeth, glaring at her with molten eyes. She did not waver, smiling still in spite of his fury.

"No. Hilda's is just an alias. I am Touko White, Champion of the Unova Region."

And he should have _known_; he should have known once Cheren regarded her oddly because there was no way that Cheren _wouldn't_ know her—he paid attention to every bit of news, idolized the Champion, and despite her efforts to blend in he recognized her features.

"Cheren knew," he spat, "Cheren _knew_ and he didn't tell me!"

"_Cheren_ found out later," Hilda—no, Touko—said, the smile fading from her lips. "It was Bianca who realized it first. And I told them not to tell you, because you would find out soon enough."

Bianca was the first to find out? And _she_ of all people didn't think that telling him was more important than keeping a secret? He didn't know why he was so angry, maybe because he was the last to know because he just didn't _realize_, maybe because he had been so _naïve_, maybe because he thought that she wasn't even a trainer and that he tried so hard to _impress_ her with his skills that she probably already _knew _and he probably looked like the world's greatest _idiot_—

"Touya," she said, her voice flat. When he looked up at her she was holding up a pokeball, eyes serious and burning with something he couldn't recognize. "You came here for a battle. Becoming Champion was your dream, wasn't it? Here you are. Now come and get what you came for."

He bit the side of his cheek, tasting blood. The pain cleared his mind; he pulled out one of his own pokeballs, still glaring at the girl he thought he loved.

She smiled, a smile that momentarily confused him because it was still tinted with the pleasure in her deceit, yet laced with something different—something that he could have mistaken as love.

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He wins.

He finds triumph in this, in beating her, but there is not disappointment in her eyes when he smirks, eager to rub his victory in her face for the months that she scorned him.

She throws his arms around him instead, whispering _thank you, thank you so much_. He's too confused to speak, but when she pulls back there are tears in her eyes.

"What…?" he begins, but she takes his hands and kisses him on the cheek.

"I told you on the ferris wheel that someone asked me for my dream before leaving me," she says, and he could only nod dumbly. "It was the person that I loved."

And he didn't believe in love any more, not since the first time, but Touya thinks that this time his heart had truly broken even though he was determined to hate her for leaving him, but in reality he was just angry at himself for not telling her how he felt and jealous of the fact that she was the Champion and had been in front of him all along.

"I couldn't leave the region, not when I still had Champion duties to do—but now, I can finally go look for him."

"I—what?"

"Thank you," she says again, hugging him tight. "Really."

And then that is it; she runs off, heels clicking as she descends the stairs.

"Wait!" He calls, and she turns, her eyes full of happy tears and he realizes that she is still beautiful, if not more beautiful than before. "I loved you," he tells her. "I still do."

And there was only brief surprise in her cerulean eyes; she turns to face him, a sad smile on her lips. "But I'm in love with a missing criminal," she tells him, gently.

This surprises him and he can't help but ask, "What's his name?"

"N. N Harmonia. He…he was the King of Team Plasma."

And he wasn't Cheren but even he remembered the short-lived reign of Team Plasma and the terror they instilled once they awakened Reshiram—and then something clicked, the fact that she was probably the girl all over the news back then, the hero who had defeated Team Plasma, the one chosen by Zekrom.

"You're a hopeless romantic," he says, shaking his head, and she gives a soft laugh.

"And so are you—isn't that why we're the same?" she says, with a bright smile.

"You used me," he accused.

"You thought you loved me," she says, smiling still, walking back up the stairs—to him. She doesn't deny it, but somehow this seemed more complicated than being used—it was sort of true and sort of not. "And I thought I could fall in love with you, but I know he's out there waiting for me."

She tilts his chin up and kisses him; it's a kiss of lies and deceit and artificial love but he still doesn't want to let her go. He winds his fingers through her hair and he knows that she doesn't mean anything by this kiss; it's almost a polite gesture out of gratitude, so that he can have a part of her (that he so craves) when she leaves him for another man.

"Go," he says when they break apart, almost disgusted. He wants to be disgusted, because she has someone waiting for her, someone she wants to find, but he wants to grab her wrist and hold her tight so she'll crash into _him_, instead. He wants to think her shallow for kissing him and vindictively he wants to hope that N Harmonia will find her dirty so that she'll run back to him and he'll kiss away her tears and they'll kiss again—only this time, out of love. But he knows he's a hopeless romantic, just like her, so instead he says, "Find him."

And so she smiles and runs down the steps, the sound of her heels resounding until they fade away completely.

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Years later, as he sits on top of one of the mountains that scatter Victory Road with a radio by his side, looking up at the sky, he hears about the ex-Champion of Unova intending to return to her hometown with her husband in tow.

And he smiles, because he realizes that they are not the same—he's always just been the hopeless romantic, and she's always been the one turn dreams into reality. But they were the same once; two people in love who had been scorned by their loved one (and it wasn't just women; hell hath no fury like any person scorned), feeding on hate and rage until they realized that they could never stop loving.

And maybe he hates her for leaving him still, leaving him to searching for a missing criminal whom he'd oh-so-cruelly hoped that she'd never find (but she did, and he remembers hoping she'd come back to him even then—but really, he is glad that N Harmonia knows to hold onto someone like her). But because he loves her, he smiles at the sky and decides to forgive her.

He still tastes her sweet, sweet deceit on his tongue—

But maybe, she hadn't been lying.

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End file.
